Author Archives: Rusty Rueff

About Rusty Rueff

Rusty Rueff, author of purposed worKING. Rusty Rueff is the former Chairman Emeritus of The GRAMMY Foundation in Los Angeles. He most recently completed the successful 16 month leadership role as Coordinating National Co-Chair for Technology for Obama (T4O) for the reelection of President Obama and ten-years of Board service and President of the Board of Trustees of the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco. Corporately, most recently Rueff was the Chief Executive Officer at SNOCAP, Inc. until the acquisition of the company by imeem, Inc. in April 2008. Before joining SNOCAP in 2005, he was Executive Vice President of Human Resources at Electronic Arts (EA) from 1998 until 2005. He was also with the PepsiCo companies for more than ten years, with the Pratt & Whitney division of United Technologies for two years, and in commercial radio as an on-air personality for six years. Rusty holds an M.S. in counseling and a B.A. in radio and television from Purdue University. In 2003 he was named a distinguished Purdue alumnus, and he and his wife, Patti, are the named benefactors of Purdue’s Patti and Rusty Rueff School of Visual and Performing Arts. He is a corporate director of Glassdoor.com and runcoach. He is the co-founder and Executive Committee Member of T4A.org, serves on the Founding Circle of The Centrist Project and a founding Board Member of The GRAMMY Music Education Coalition. He is also the co-author of the book Talent Force: A New Manifesto for the Human Side of Business. Rusty and his wife, Patti, reside in Hillsborough, CA and Charlestown, R.I.

day 2882: Guideposts

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“Set up road signs; put up guideposts. Mark well the path by which you came.”

Why do we need guideposts? Last week, Patti and I and our next door neighbors here in Rhode Island, where we are now, traveled to upstate New York for a couple of days to get a change of scenery (beautiful fall colors).  New York has Rhode Island on its “COVID Quarantine List” so we were not allowed to go to restaurants or interact with other people, so we holed up at Patti’s family’s Country House and all we did was hike each each day, once in the morning and once in the afternoon.  It was great and very refreshing for the mind and body.  Along the vast trails we saw many guideposts marking our path for us. What I realized is that these guideposts are important for getting to where you want to go, but more so, critical for getting back to where you started.  It made me think that in the world of business, we spend a lot of time talking about where we want to go, but little time in keeping ourselves grounded in where we might need to return.  It might be that the failure of Quibi was such a cautionary tale.  They kept trying to become more and more and once they were too far out there, it became impossible to return to where they started.  Too much money and too much time spent for too little results.  They had no guideposts to keep them from going too far from where they had to return.

The Prophet Jeremiah told us the importance of putting out our own guideposts so that if we become lost, disoriented, or even distracted we can find our way back. This is an instruction for each of us.  We likely each have our own unique guideposts to mark our paths, but whatever we use it is important to have them.  I find myself easily distracted with all that is swirling around me.  And with distraction can come a veering off course that is unintended.  And with the busyness of life I will look up and not even recognize where I am.  It is then that the guideposts of God’s Word and teachings provide me a direction back.  In the times we are in, our own guideposts may become even more essential to our life journey.

Reference:  Jeremiah 31:21 (New Life Translation)